Pancake batters, dietary supplements drinks, baby formulas and nutritional shakes often require an agitation or dispersion mechanism for optimal mixing and dispersion of their powdered constituents. Several such mechanisms include an agitator attached to a mixing container. These attached or fixed agitators may have a semi-permanent connection to the container, or they may be manufactured integrally within the container. Several such devices are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,060,419 and 3,136,532. These attached elements often create cracks and crevices, however, which are difficult to clean. Furthermore, these devices often do not allow sufficient movement or reach of the agitator to the entire container area, and thus fail to provide optimal mixing.
Hand mixing the above-mentioned mixtures into a smooth, homogeneous suspension often requires a considerable amount of work as well. The powdered composition of these mixtures often clumps, forming aggregations of powder surrounded by thick layers of paste that inhibit liquid from penetrating into the clumps. These clumps may float, sink to the bottom of the container, or remain suspended at some level in the fluid. Because powder may also stick to the sides or bottom of a container and resist mixing by simple shaking, in many cases, an elastic agitator is necessary for complete dispersion of clumps and aggregations on the container walls. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,739,032 discloses several elastic agitators. These agitators strike the container walls in random directions with respect to their direction of compressibility, however, and thereby fail on most such contacts to compress.
Hence the prior art fails to provide an agitation element and mixture vessel combination that is effective at reaching clumps and aggregation at the top, middle and bottom of a container while utilizing the full agitating capacity of the agitator.